Japanese portrait - All the same ?

First of all, I want to say that my deepest and most intense Japanese style life experience was not in Japan, but in Korea. I was H24 with Japanese people, speaking Japanese only, thing I am far from being able to say while in Gaidai. Those picture are then from the past semester, in Korea.

Japan, this small island on the border of the Asian continent, has an image somewhat blurred for a lot of westerners and the worldwide spread oriental-ism through the past century is not making things more clear. Let’s try to draw a broad portrait of those strange guys.

Japanese people all have the same jet-black haired. They also all have high-tech mobile phones. They take their shoes off more than we do.

They have small and slight bodies

They eat a lot of rice.

They take a lot of picture.


They can sleep pretty much everywhere and at any time, in any situation.

They can't drink much.

Well, to some extent, it is a good broad portrait. But there is a lot more to say about them.

They are not so interested in foreign culture outside Japan, especially Korea.

They are so polite, respectful under any circumstances.

They eat healthily

And only small quantities.

They are very reserved and shy.

So reserved...

They only think about studying/working.

They always keep impassive, unshaken faces. They would not let themselves do some grimaces and other funny faces.

They are actually the most serious people I have ever met.

From a first shot, and compared to some westerners, Japanese people have more physical characteristics in common than we do have in France or in the States. With image associated to their strong collectivism sense, one could be tempted to imagine and describe Japanese people as being all the same, Asian, similar with boring similarities.

http://gemssty.com/2007/06/28/uniformity-manufactured-landscapes/

I however think that they do have a lot of particularities. Just from the people I showed in my picture, one Keiko, also called Haeja, is a Zainichi Korean more Japanese than the other ones. Nano is from Okinawa and her way of speaking, behaving, nearly aggressive is so far away from the typical quiet Japanese girl one could imagine. And the last one, Yuuko, originally from Tokyo is a mix of both, with a good dash of crazyness and a definitely international mind.

Japan is actually more like that.

Everyone has more or less the same roots, Asian, but they all have pretty nuances which makes this country such an eternal discovery world and not a boring repetition.